How This Love Breaks Me Down
by DonnaPaperheart
Summary: James is in so much danger right now and he doesn't even know it. He thinks that everything is fine. He thinks that this spell they're going to do, this ritual, he thinks it's going to make them safer. It is going to kill him.


**How This Love Breaks Me Down**

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter.

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><p>It's his fault. It's his fault! Oh gods—it's his fault that James—<p>

James is in so much danger right now and he doesn't even know it. He thinks that everything is fine. He thinks that this spell they're going to do, this ritual, he thinks it's going to make them safer.

It is going to kill him.

Sirius tries to tell James this, tries to make his body move differently, tries to say things differently. Tries to let James know that something is wrong—wrong, wrong wrong!

He can't even deviate from his usual devil-may-care pattern of behaviour by the smallest fraction of a step. That is how deep whatever it was that Bella did to him goes.

His arm comes up to sling itself around James' shoulder without his permission.

He wants to scream, to flinch away, to just stop. Because he's poison and he's slowly killing one of the only two people in the world he gives any sort of damn about.

"I'm glad," James says, quiet and serious, hazel eyes sharp behind wire-rimmed glasses, "I mean, I care about Pete, we've been friends since first year for cripes sake but—"

Don't, please don't say it. Jamie you're hurting me. I'm going to hurt you, stop trusting me please, I love you I don't want to hurt you!

"Prongs, I—"

He can't even try to call him Jamie anymore, except in his own mind, so the choked off amalgamation of syllables is all he can manage to squeeze out.

"No, don't—this, this is important. Just lemme get this out, Pads, please."

Sirius wonders briefly if James notices that he doesn't call him Siri anymore, he thinks Rems might notice—and save them both—if Dumbledore didn't keep dicking around with him, sending him out to all the wilds of the world to look for stupid werewolves.

Sometimes he hates Dumbledore and everything he stands for, and this moment is one of those times, where he has to stand here in silent, stifling agony and poison a man he loves ten-thousand times more than his own life.

He tries to make the silence talk for him, tries to stretch it out until it's its own kind of scream, but that—fucking Bellatrix, he'll kill her if he ever gets the chance—chokehold on his soul makes him bump his hip against James', encouraging him to speak. Reassuring without words.

Its nine years of friendship, loyalty and love sharpened into a deadly point.

"I'm glad it's Pete," James whispers again after a long while of just standing there in the snow, hip to hip, "I'm glad because I could lose Pete and be okay. If he was—I would be torn up but I would get through it."

He raises his gaze to Sirius' again and Sirius can feel the tears that won't fall gathered in the back of his throat and pricking at his eyes.

"If something happened to you—well, let's just say I wouldn't be okay and leave it there."

"And you think I would?" says Sirius, his voice steady and without any sarcasm or mocking, perfectly serious, the eternal prankster buried for once, "Merlin and Morgana, if something ever happened to you I—"

James probably thinks that Sirius has cut himself off to avoid voicing his feelings, because before all of this—in the template of behaviour the coercion draws from without allowing room for change or growth—talking about his feelings or anyone else's makes Sirius uncomfortable.

In reality it's just the thing Bella put inside his brain breaking off another attempt to tell James everything from: I love you. I love you. Please, I need you. I love you. Don't fall in love with her. Look at me please. I promise I'll make you happy—all the way back around to: Get away. Get away from me Jamie. Please! I'm not safe. I'm killing you, just look into my eyes and realize that I'm killing you. I'm no good for you. I'm going to destroy you and you won't even see because you're so bloody stupid-blind. Just, please, Jamie, see. For once in your goddamn life see what my eyes are trying to tell you!

"Nothing is going to happen to you though."

To James, to anyone else, it probably sounds like he's trying to convince himself of that fact—but it's a lie.

He wants to scream. To howl. To rage.

He takes a deep steadying breath. He smiles. A fond, slightly crooked upward twitch of his lips that's a little mischievous and a little flirty and goes very well with the desperation sure to be swimming in his eyes and between the cracks of his voice.

"That's why we're doing this. Changing the secret keeper. So that you and Lily and the baby will be safer."

James nods, chewing on his lower lip.

"I wish Remus was here, though," Sirius says, it's the first truth that has slipped past Bella's coercion tonight.

Possibly it's the first truth that has slipped past Bella's coercion this month.

"Yeah, me too."

James' jaw is tight and his expression wistful, faraway and hard with doubts—doubts Dumbledore fucking put there after Rems' last run to Augsberg went south—but Sirius can't berate him. Can't insist.

It's not Remy c'mon, don't be an idiot, you know he'd never—and he also can't confess—which leaves nothing but a weighty silence between them.

"It's going to be a boy," James announces, loud, as if there's nothing to fear, a quicksilver grin animating his face, making him look his age for once, "Lils and I went to see Pomfrey and she told us, yesterday. I'm going to have a son."

He looks so proud and happy and Sirius just aches for him. Somewhere deep, deep down.

And, he clarifies again, for his own peace of mind, it's not like he actually hates Evans. He can't blame her for finally—finally!—taking her obnoxiously red-topped head out of her arse and noticing how bloody fantastic his best-friend is. That would be both mean-spirited and hypocritical. Especially since she's the one that James has always, always loved and wanted to be with this way.

James' happiness comes first. It's the cardinal rule that Sirius has lived by since second year when he first realized that the reckless, wind-swept boy he'd befriended had somehow become his whole world. If James wants Evans—and by Merlin and Morgana he does—then Sirius has no right to let his bloody feelings get in their way.

So, no, he doesn't hate Evans. He's just jealous and resentful. He's trying not to let that trickle down and colour his opinion of this baby but it's hard.

"Congratulations Prongsie," he says, a matching, slightly manic, grin splitting his own face as he draws James down into an affectionate headlock and musses his already disastrous hair.

"Gerroff you mangy loon," James laughs, wiggling out of the hold and stumbling dizzily pushing at Sirius' bicep and smiling up at him, his face lit by moonlight and witchlight and the reflection of the stars on the snow.

"Not mangy," Sirius whines, jutting his bottom lip out exaggeratedly.

James doesn't dignify that with an answer, just gasps out, breathless with laughter, "Be the godfather?"

"What?" Sirius squawks, flailing his arms like he's overbalancing.

It's only happening in his mind but the action makes him feel better.

"Be the godfather for my son," James repeats, still grinning while Sirius' heart sinks into his stomach like a stone.

"Are you serious? Me, someone's—Prongs, I'm a terrible role model!"

"Of course I'm serious. And you're not that bad, and even if you were I wouldn't care. You're like my brother. You're my family. You'll be my son's family too."

"I don't know what to say—"

It's the last protest he's allowed. He feels it. In the next few seconds he'll say yes, and pretend to be excited and awed and overwhelmed. In a few seconds he'll have betrayed his friend in the last and worst possible way. If James' son's life rests in his hands then it is in grave danger. Because Sirius will be forced to give him to Voldemort.

"When in doubt pick yes—or all of the above."

He'll never forgive me for this.

"All of the above," Sirius answers.

He gets smacked for that one too but James looks pleased.

"We're gonna name him Harry, after Lily's father. Harry James Potter."

"Ooh, can I get a kid named after me?"

James snorts, and says faux-seriously, "Only if you're very good this year, young man. And don't you think I won't ask Remus to keep a sharp eye on you."

"Oh ho?" Sirius teases on reflex, "Are you so sure Mrs. Potter is going to be on board with that plan Prongsie?"

James flashes him another grin, this one with some secondary heat to it, and says with a plentiful heap of faux-modesty and a careless shrug: "What can I say Pads, I'm just that irresistible."

Sirius lets out a bark of laughter that cracks through the hush of the snow dusted evening, "Whatever helps you sleep at night, Prongs," he says, snickering.

"Too right," snorts James, stretching. "It's late. I need to get back or Lils will outright murder me."

"Ball and chain," says Sirius, shaking his head, "You wouldn't catch me with one that's for sure."

"I like it."

"Yeah, well, you're an odd one, mate." Sirius pauses, shoving his hands in his pockets and cocking his head a bit to the left in question, "See you later?"

"'Course," agrees James. "Don't worry so much, Pads. Nothing could keep us apart for long."

He spins on his heel and disapparates with a wave.

It's the last time Sirius sees him alive and in person.

He dies just eight months later.

And Sirius knows that it's all his fault. But even as it feels like his world is collapsing and his heart is being crushed all he can do is laugh and be quietly grateful that Hagrid took Harry away from him in time.

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><p><strong>AN:<strong> Please review and let me know what you think!


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